


Valhalla

by NanakiBH



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Devotion, Friendship, Hope, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 07:20:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7499184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NanakiBH/pseuds/NanakiBH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a place waiting for him, if only he would open his eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Valhalla

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://superhighschoollevelsmut.dreamwidth.org/1061.html?thread=1411621#cmt1411621) from the kink meme:  
> "hinata waiting for comatose!komaeda to wake up even though he never does but a boy can pretend, can't he?"
> 
> Conveniently, I was thinking about something like this after the last thing I wrote. I was thinking to myself about how being the "ultimate hope", in its own ways, might turn out to be as difficult as having extraordinary luck.

A daydream like a flashback; like film cut from a reel that never occurred, Hinata imagined all the things that could have been, the things he should've said. Each illusion blurred and blended, never finding a conclusion, replaying just before they could end, circling in an infinite loop of bitter regret and dissatisfaction. Smiles that became twisted, comfortable moments razed by cruelty impossible to comprehend, memories tossed away and trampled...

They may have become tattered underfoot, but he wanted to pick up the pieces and reconstruct the past that dimly shined on the other side of a black monitor. He believed in the hope bestowed in him and the residual warmth lingering in those memories, no matter how far away they became.

They were still there. Right there inside of him, yet too distant to touch.

Blending and mixing. Turning into fantasies.

Though, even if hope granted him an ounce of luck and produce a miracle, he was afraid that the revived past wouldn't look the same once it was brought into the present. The lenses he viewed the world through were different then. And even before then, they were different, too. They only continued to change with him as he became someone new. To hope for the past to meet him in the future was...

It was just stupid, wasn't it? A selfish, ignorant thought like that.

But he didn't have a choice, either. Even if he knew that what he wished for were just a fantasy created by his accumulating regrets, hope wouldn't let him stop. In his anguish, it compelled him to search for the beautiful ending in a place where everything had already crumbled away.

He couldn't just stop his feet. Komaeda was in that place. If there were a hope to be found, then he couldn't turn himself away from the pain. He couldn't leave him there.

He still had to show him...

 

“Yo, Hinata-chan.”

 

Hearing his name, he sucked in a breath and forced the emotion off his face. Feeling embarrassed to let anyone catch him there again, he stood and tried to look unaffected.

Mioda stood in the doorway, the light to her back casting her shape in shadow. One of those flashbacks indistinguishable from a daydream came back to him and made her look, for a second, like someone completely different. As soon as he shook his head, the memory was gone and her sympathetically smiling face could be seen even in the dark.

She gave him a little wave and came over to join him, the door closing behind her. As soon as the light was gone, Hinata's eyes went right back to being adjusted to the dark. Their only light came from the fifteen units circling the room. Shed like cocoons, all were empty but one. Just one who had yet to emerge from that transformative sleep.

“Here again, huh?” she asked him as she bent and peered through the glass.

“Yeah.” He couldn't think of anything else to say.

He appreciated that someone thought to check on him, but there was only one person Hinata wanted to see.

“Ibuki ain't gonna judge you. This's pretty nice, you comin' here to keep ol' Komaeda company. He was a lonely guy, you know? That's what Ibuki thinks, at least. If we'd paid more attention to him, he might not've done what he did.”

The thought hadn't escaped him. Numerous times, Hinata wondered whether things would have been different if he'd trusted his intuition from the beginning If only they took the time to understand him. If only they believed in hope as strongly as he did and trusted each other. If only... But 'if only' wasn't going to get them anywhere. It was a useless sentiment.

The past was gone. They couldn't help Komaeda by rethinking decisions they'd already made.

He would've surely found that arrogant.

...Wouldn't he have?

“Maybe everyone's right,” Hinata said, his voice sounding distant to his ears. Saying that out loud wasn't going to be enough to make him believe it. He knew that. It was just– for a little while, he wanted to know what it would feel like if he could think like them. The longer he stayed there waiting for him to awaken, the more it felt like an obligation; after spending so much time already, there was no way he could simply give up without feeling like he'd lost something.

But it was more than that. He was trapped in a wide web of complications he couldn't untangle himself from.

Guilt. Regret. A sense of responsibility. And all the unnamed feelings that refused to leave him whenever he thought about his time with Komaeda.

She looked up suddenly, surprised. “Huh? You're gonna give up?”

“I don't think it's a matter of whether I will or won't,” Hinata said. “I... can't. It doesn't feel like a choice anymore.”

That didn't automatically make it bad. No one was forcing him to be there. The only pressure he felt came from inside himself.

“Ah... Sorry. Ibuki's not good with this kinda thing. It's just... Everyone's been kind of worried about you. You haven't been acting like yourself lately.”

“'Myself', huh...?” That word was still difficult for him to understand. “Hm. I wonder if he would've said that, too.”

“Yeah, of course he would've!” she insisted. “You were the one who was the closest to him, so I'm sure he would've been thinking the same thing,” Mioda said. It sounded like she was doing her best to reassure him while reassuring herself at the same time. There was a sliver of uncertainty that made the edges of her mouth quiver as she turned her eyes away. “Ibuki shouldn't be sayin' this, so take it with a grain of salt or whatever, 'kay? I don't want you to doubt yourself. The reason the rest of us are here now is because of you. I don't really know what I'm tryin' to say, but I just know it would feel wrong if you gave up on him.”

“You're right. That doesn't sound like something you should be saying.”

Her shoulders jumped and she immediately flew into an apology. “Uh- S-sorry! Seriously, sorry! Ibuki's got the passion, but she doesn't have the words. Y-you feel me?”

“No, it's fine. I appreciate it. It's nice to hear someone say what I've been thinking for a change. I've gotten used to the others nudging me, suggesting that I move on, so... I think it's gotten to me.” And frankly, it was exhausting. They didn't know it because he tended to hide it well around them, but every word made him doubt himself.

Getting up, Mioda wandered over to the other side and pressed her fingers against the glass, keeping her eyes on Komaeda as she spoke, if only to avoid looking up. “Y'know, I wouldn't tell you to keep waitin' if I didn't think he'd wake up.”

That sounded like wishful thinking.

Hinata kept his head down too. “Isn't it unlikely, after all this time? He went into the program with a terminal illness. The program may have given him more time than he even had remaining outside...” That despair-inducing train of thought was the type that easily went out of control, pulling him along as it headed for wreckage. It was an unproductive thought, but it offered the kind of despair that was impossible to resist. Submitting to it felt cathartic. “That might've been a miracle and we... We crushed it, didn't we? We didn't know, but we...”

“Yeah. We didn't know, so you shouldn't be beating yourself up for that. We had no control over what happened in there,” she said, her features drawn tight into a defensive expression. “I mean, he ain't dead, is he? Then stop talking like he is.”

Of course, she was right. Just like the others, he had no control over the situation inside the program, but once he returned to the outside... Once he returned, he realized that he was _returning_ to something – and it was something horrifying. What he returned to was _himself_. There was no mistaking that. He couldn't cut off the part of him that was responsible for altering the program. He couldn't disassociate from it.

He was Kamukura Izuru.

Kamukura Izuru was him.

No matter how easy it could've been to think of him as a totally separate person with his own thoughts and actions, Hinata couldn't ignore and deny that they were one person operating the same brain. Using another name to identify that part of himself only worked to further his confusion.

He had 'his' memories, but he remembered inserting the data into the program with his own hands.

“That's not true,” Hinata said quietly. His feet were on the ground, but he felt like he was falling away. “It was me. It was all because of me. It was my fault from the beginning. I was the one who-”

“Yo, Hinata-chan? Ibuki told you to knock it off, right? So knock it off! Get your head together, will ya?” Her voice was loud enough to bring him back, doing more than making him listen. “There ain't no point in lookin' back an' blamin' yourself. I'm different now. Everyone's different now – and so are you.”

She wasn't wrong. He was going in a circle. From the start, he told himself that looking back was pointless – that it would only leave him willfully wallowing in negativity. For someone who was supposed to be the new hope for the rest, it was awfully shameful for him to be thinking such irresponsible thoughts.

“Komaeda wouldn't even want to come back if he woke up and saw me like this.” He wanted to hit his head against the glass. He wanted Komaeda to get up and tell him he hated him, to let him know that he'd been waiting for nothing, that he could finally stop. It didn't matter. Anything would have been better than endlessly questioning himself.

Patting her knees, Mioda stood and faced the door, looking like she was about ready to leave. “You could use some sunshine.”

“Huh...?” He had no clue what that had to do with what he was saying.

She tapped a finger against her cheek thoughtfully. “Well, to Ibuki's eyes, you still look like hope. I think it's pretty awesome that you would keep coming here every day, even if you don't know if he'll wake up. If that ain't hope, then Ibuki doesn't know what is.” Looking over her shoulder, she gave him one of her goofy grins. “If you want to show him a smile when he wakes up, then maybe you should find yours first.”

Wasn't she supposed to be bad with words? ...That had been an excuse, hadn't it.

It shouldn't have been so easy for him to already crack a smile.

That was strange. But kind of funny.

“Mioda... Thank you.”

She laughed, rubbing the back of her neck. “Ahaha! I helped, huh? Yeah, I bet I helped! It's all thanks to Mioda Ibuki! Ah, that makes me feel good. You've got a good smile, y'know? So keep doin' that! Smile, smile!” With that kind of enthusiasm, she truly sounded like the ultimate light music club member.

She may not have been the most eloquent, but it sounded like she really believed in everything she said. Those words and the confidence with which she said them reminded Hinata of what it had been like before any of them were taken to the island, even before their hearts were filled with despair. But, looking back at a time like that, he could still remember the bitterness and jealousy he tasted back then, envious of the talented students chosen by Hope's Peak.

To see her smiling in front of him after overcoming despair... It made him understand the insignificance of the past. There was hope in the future. There were uncertainties too, but there was still the chance for them to see a bright new sky; the lives they wished to create for themselves without restriction.

“Well, I'll be on my way, then. Ibuki's glad she could slap a smile back on that face o' yours! See ya!” After she threw him a quick wave, she was out the door.

The room seemed a little colder once she was gone, but she'd left him with a precious warmth that stayed lit in his chest. She hadn't said anything he hadn't already told himself, but it was different when he heard someone else say it. He couldn't become a person for other people to believe in if he loosened his grasp on the things he believed in. It was heavy, but that was the kind of responsibility he always wanted.

There was no way he could become tired of waiting.

Hope could cry and hope could regret, but hope could never stop believing.

Then, if hope was his talent, he could continue to wait for a thousand years. That was fine. He could do that for him. To defiantly prove that hope was stronger than despair or the worst of luck. To show him that kind of unchained future and the tenderness of the ones who were waiting for him.

Until then, it was okay to go around collecting the pieces of the past. Someone had to look after them and keep them safe. Once that future arrived, they would reassemble to create something new.

Alone, just the two of them, Hinata sat on the floor by his side.

“Hey, Komaeda. I'm still here, okay?”


End file.
